


Better Dig Two

by misscai



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guns, Horses, Romance, Sick Character, Spoilers, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 19:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16980423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscai/pseuds/misscai
Summary: “Best thing you can do for him is make his last days happy.”“You’re wrong,” she hissed. “I’ll go to my own grave before I see Arthur put in his.”





	Better Dig Two

**Author's Note:**

> Fran Kerrigan is an OC I made for the RDR2 world. Huck is her horse. She's a disaster.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> **Spoilers Ahead**

As soon as Arthur disappeared around the corner, still coughing into his gloved hand, Fran slipped into the doctor’s office. The clerk gave her a curious once-over, but couldn’t even speak before Fran interrupted.

“I need the doctor. _Now.”_

“Are you sick? Or injured?”

“I just need to talk to him.”

“Well, we don’t just let people in for social calls.” The clerk had gotten snippy, and Fran wouldn’t tolerate it. Her fingers twitched towards the pistol on her hip. Luckily, a door opened and the doctor stepped out of his office. Fran grabbed his arm the moment she could get a grip on it.

“The man that was just here,” she said without preamble, “what was wrong with him?” She could sense the inevitable refusal, the assertion of confidentiality, the importance of patients’ privacy—she decided to preempt it all. “I really don’t wanna shoot you, Doc, but I will if I have to. Nothing fatal, just enough to make you talk. Or you can talk now, and my gun stays in its holster.”

He hesitated a moment longer. Then he said, on a sigh, “Tuberculosis,” and Fran wished he’d never spoken at all.

“But you gave him a cure.” In her mind she could see it all playing out: Arthur, uncomfortably seated on a sterile white table, being poked and prodded by the doctor who gave him his diagnosis then handed him a bottle of miracle potion or something. And he took the whole bottle like a good little patient, and it was working in his body right then and there. He’d be cured. He’d _live._ In Fran’s head, he’d live. Yet on the doctor’s face, she could see that her fantasies weren’t reality. Tears threatened to seal her throat. “You fixed him. That’s what you do, you fix people. That’s your goddamn _job.”_

“Tuberculosis has no cure, ma’am. There is nothing I can do except make him comfortable.”

“No,” Fran said, shaking her head. “No, you… You _find_ something to do. You find a cure, and you give it to him.”

“It isn’t that simple—”

The pistol was out of its holster before Fran even realized her hand had moved. She leveled it at the doctor’s nose with a practiced ease. Her voice, when she spoke, startled even herself with its venom. “ _Make_ it that simple.”

“Ma’am—” His hands were in the air, fear plain in his eyes. Normally Fran would feel pity. Now she couldn’t feel anything except the terror strangling her heart.

“Get him a cure. I don’t care what you have to do, or how much money you have to spend—you’ll bankrupt this place if you have to—but you will cure him. You’ll see me every week until you put that magic bottle into my hand. You hear me?” The doctor nodded hastily, and Fran holstered her pistol as she shoved her way out of the clinic. She whistled for her horse; the moment that Huck got close enough, Fran swung herself into the saddle and they were riding out of the city.

.

She didn’t keep track of time, riding under the sun and the moon without regard and only stopping when she absolutely had to. Every doctor in every town received a visit; some friendlier than others. Fran tracked down witch doctors and shamans, medicine men in the mountains and voodoo healers in the swamplands. Her saddlebags grew heavy with glass bottles and herb satchels, all promising to heal Arthur’s illness; when her bags were stuffed, she dumped her food supply to make more room for the doctors’ cures. The gnawing hunger in her belly as the days went on was constantly overshadowed by determination and fear—so much fear that it startled Fran out of already-fitful sleeps in her saddle.

Losing Arthur… it was a terrifying thought. He was the best thing to come out of the mess that had become her life. She’d found a home with the Van der Linde gang, but without him… The camp would be nothing more than a collection of tents to Fran. She couldn’t lose him. She wouldn’t.

The mantra repeated itself in her head until she sat up on her bedroll and unfolded her map, peering at the land’s layout by the dim campfire light. Every place she’d received medicine was marked with a tiny X; tomorrow, she’d ride into Strawberry to track down the cure-all peddler, and then she’d start the journey back to Rhodes to press the doctor on his progress. If Huck could bear the ride, maybe she’d even be able to head straight for Saint Denis after—

“Fran! Is that you?” The smooth, young voice of Lenny Summers made Fran jump, and she scrambled to her feet as he dismounted his horse. “Thank Christ, I found you. Where the hell have you been?”

“I’m helping the camp, same as everyone else does.”

“For three weeks?” He frowned at her, eyeing her from head to toe. Fran knew what she looked like; she’d seen her reflection in the window of the barbershop in Valentine the day prior. Her dark eyes were shadowed by even darker circles, her wheat-golden hair gritty with dust, peach-pale and freckled skin gone filthy from nights spent lying on the ground. For a moment she remembered her days before: simple days, cleanly dressed in cotton frocks, her hair tied back with ribbons so she could tend to the livestock on her sister’s farm. But no. No, those days were gone, burned away just like the farm itself, dead and buried like her sister and her sister’s husband. She couldn’t afford distraction from the now, from the task she’d set herself.

“I’ve been busy.”

“You look like hell.” Lenny reached for her arm, but she jerked away. “You should come back to camp and rest. Can’t help the gang if you’re skin and bones like this.”

“No. I’m not ready.”

“Frannie...” When Lenny reached out the second time, she allowed him to grip her shoulder. He was only a few years younger than she was, and he’d been nothing but kind to Fran since she took up with the gang. She considered him a friend; that trust lowered her defenses, allowing tears to spring to her eyes. She looked at him and felt as helpless as her pride allowed her.

“Arthur’s real sick.”

“I know.” He shook his head, looked towards the ground. “He ain’t told anyone. Dutch says it’ll pass, but my mama… Well, she had the same cough.”

“Somebody’s lived through it. Somebody’s got a cure.”

“Ain’t a cure for consumption, Frannie. You know that.” Fran backed away from him, shaking her head vehemently.

“No. I’m gonna find one.” She dropped to the ground, stuffing the map into her waistband and gathering her bedroll into a sloppy cylinder. In one brisk movement she’d slung her saddlebags and bedroll onto Huck’s back, hauling herself up into the saddle. Lenny grabbed the reins before she could.

“Fran. There’s no cure.” He rested a hand on her knee, like a hunter consoling its wounded prey before sliding the knife into its heart. “Best thing you can do for him is make his last days happy.”

“You’re _wrong,”_ she hissed, jerking the reins out of his hands. “I’ll go to my own grave before I see Arthur put in his.” Huck leapt forward when she urged him, and they took off into the night.

.

The peddler in Strawberry gave up his largest bottle of miracle tonic, with some persuasion; the doctor in Rhodes delivered an amber liquid with a minty smell. Fran tucked them away in her saddlebag, then placed Huck on the road to Saint Denis. It was a long trek, and her body was weakened from lack of food. She’d be okay if she just rested on Huck’s neck and closed her eyes… Just for a moment…

“Fran!” Hands shook her awake, and Fran blinked in confusion as John’s face came into view. The glow of campfires and the distant sound of friendly bickering signaled that she was back at camp. Huck must have taken her there when she fell asleep. But the ride to camp was nearly as long as the ride to Saint Denis; how long had she been unconscious? “My God, where have you been? What have you done to yourself?”

“Arthur,” she said, clumsily dismounting, “I need to see him.” John steadied her when she swayed on her feet, keeping a hand on her elbow in case she stumbled again.

“You need to see Pearson. Christ, when’s the last time you ate? Or slept? Or bathed?” Fran shook him off, clutching the saddlebags to her chest.

“Where’s Arthur?” She didn’t even wait for him to respond, stumbling towards the fringes of the camp where Arthur’s wagon rested. The canvas flaps of the tent were lowered for privacy; she respected that, even in her desperation. Her feet halted, and she gripped the saddlebags for stability. There was no telling what Arthur looked like now—her mind’s eye unhelpfully designed an image of the man gone pale and gaunt, blood trickling down the corners of his mouth from coughing fits that tore vessels in his lungs. She was terrified that her imagination would be right, but she had to know. She had to see him. So she steeled her nerve, ignored the shaking of her body, and softly called, “Arthur.”

The flaps twitched aside almost immediately and Fran’s knees gave out at the sight of Arthur, still tan and handsome and healthy, save for some dark shadows beneath his eyes. She sank to the ground with a sob, so delirious with relief that she hardly registered Arthur picking her up.

“You damn fool woman,” he grunted, setting her down on his cot and kneeling in front of her. “Where the hell did you disappear to?”

“Medicine,” she said, which was a suitable reply to her exhaustion-addled brain. Fran opened the flaps of the saddlebags, pulling out her haul without delay. “Start with the dried powders, ‘cause they’re herbs and they might spoil. If they don’t work there’s plenty of tonics. And if—”

“I ain’t told you I was sick.”

“I...” Fran hesitated, twisting her hands around one of the glass bottles. “I followed you to the doctor. I threatened him. He told me.”

“Then you know it’s consumption. There ain’t a medicine to fix it.”

“Yes there is,” she insisted, pushing the bottles and satchels of herbs into his hands.

“Fran—”

“One of them will work, I saw every healer in the region—” Arthur shoved them aside with a growl, grabbing Fran’s wrists and squeezing them just tight enough to hurt.

“Dammit, woman, will you just _let me die?”_ Fran was speechless for a moment, certain that she’d only imagined the words coming out of his mouth. But he was still bruising her wrists and scowling, so he must have actually spoken. Anger simmered in her stomach, and skyrocketed to a boiling point when Arthur said, “I ain’t worth all this trouble.”

“Bullshit!” She broke his grip on her, standing up and jabbing a finger down at him. “I’ll tell you what you are. You’re a goddamn idiot.” He stood at that, a rebuttal already on his lips, but Fran silenced him with a slice of her hand through the air. “No, you keep your fucking mouth shut. You’re a dumb son of a bitch, Arthur Morgan, and you got a whole heap of problems, but you _ain’t_ worthless.” She poked his chest, hard enough to make her finger hurt. “You’re gonna live, damn you. You’re gonna live a good, long life and I’m gonna make sure of it.”

“What, you’re gonna mother me the rest of my life?”

“No, you ass, I’m gonna marry you!” Arthur’s eyes widened, and Fran could feel her heart drop to her feet at her confession. But words couldn’t be unspoken; better to just keep talking, so that Arthur didn’t get the chance to. She looked down at the floor, her arms falling limply to her sides. “I’m gonna marry you and we’ll leave the gang and buy a farm in the Heartlands. John and Abigail and little Jack can come, too. The Morgans and the Marstons. We can raise horses and chickens and cows. I’ll have your children. I’ll make you happy, Arthur. You just gotta live, ‘cause I don’t… There ain’t nothin’ for me here if you ain’t here with me.”

Quiet fell between them. Outside, Fran knew that camp life went on as usual: Uncle sang bawdy saloon songs while Javier played the guitar; the fire crackled beneath Pearson’s stew pot; Ms. Grimshaw played dominoes with Tilly; Abigail would be putting Jack to bed in their tent. When she walked outside, she’d begin her nightly chore of bedding down the horses. For now, though, her entire heart was laid bare before Arthur Morgan, and Arthur Morgan had yet to respond.

“That’s...” he started, and Fran’s throat was suddenly constricted with tears, “… a real long way of sayin’ you love me.” It was so unexpected that she let out a strangled giggle, glancing up at him.

“You got a better way?”

“Think I might.” One hand curled around her hip while the other cupped her jaw, and in one smooth motion Arthur’s lips were on hers. It was a sweet, chaste kiss, one that left Fran aching for more when he pulled away. She clutched at the front of his shirt to keep him close, and Arthur chuckled. “That good enough for you?”

“For now,” she said with a smile. “So, you gonna take your medicine?”

“Reckon I got to now. We got a farm to buy.”


End file.
